


here's a map, here's a shovel, here's my achilles heel

by crackers4jenn



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-13
Updated: 2020-11-13
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:21:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27548269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crackers4jenn/pseuds/crackers4jenn
Summary: Post-15x19. Turns out, Dean doesn't have to ask to get Cas back.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 26
Kudos: 324





	here's a map, here's a shovel, here's my achilles heel

**Author's Note:**

> I cannot stress how little I've seen of Supernatural since season 8 ended. I have gleaned enough over the years to mostly know what's going on, but if there's anything here that doesn't make sense, that's why.
> 
> After last night's episode, I just HAD to write this self-indulgent fic. I NEED DEAN TO GET CAS.

Sam waits until they've been on the road long enough that the tail lights ahead of them have started to go blurry.

Turned down to its lowest setting, music spills out of the radio speakers, just enough to add some white noise alongside the dull hum of the Impala's engine. Something plays with a melancholic riff.

Sam shifts his way. Dean feels his stare, feels the weight of the words he's trying to come up with to say.

Dean grits his teeth and switches on the blinker, pressing his foot against the gas until they're going fast enough to pass the car ahead. "What? Spill it."

When they're back in their own lane, Sam says, "You didn't ask."

Okay? He doesn't immediately know what the hell Sam's getting at, and he makes a face to tell him so.

Carefully, like he's tiptoeing around, Sam says, "When we were ready to give up, to end it ourselves, you told Chuck to bring everyone back. Cas."

Dean's hands tighten around the steering wheel. He can feel the car lurching forward as he gasses it again, only it's unintentional this time.

"But," Sam presses, "you didn't ask Jack."

With a smile, one he can't quite fake for longer than a couple of seconds, he tells Sam, "Yeah, well. It was his first day on the job, man, I'm not gonna go having him screw up something that big. Make Cas come back weird. No."

Sam's not buying it. Dean glances over, catches the pity, the sadness. It's enough to make his throat bob, for this overwhelming feeling of grief to swell inside, engulf him whole. He almost loses it. Almost, almost gives into the guilt and the regret that has been non-stop eating him alive since it happened. Since Cas got sucked into the Empty. He can't even dull it with booze, and he's tried.

Sam asks, "What happened to him, Dean?" and it's only because his voice is so torn from his own mourning Dean doesn't lash out to stop him.

He hesitates. Struggles to find his voice. "I told you."

"Yeah, sort of, I guess." When Dean doesn't add anything, Sam says, "So, he saved you?"

"Yeah." It comes out strained.

"How?" Sam keeps picking. "I mean, was it an angel thing, did he, I don't know, make some kinda deal--"

"Yes."

Sam reads into the shortness of Dean's response. In the way he's clenching his jaw.

"So. A deal. But, why would the Empty even _be_ there, unless--"

"Listen, I can't do this right now. Okay? I know he was your friend too, but, I just can't."

"Okay," Sam agrees gently. He stares at Dean a moment longer, sympathy oozing from him like it's turned literal, before shifting back towards the road.

Dean closes his eyes long enough to swallow down the pain, to blink past the tears.

+++

Elsewhere, in a darkened cornfield, Cas is plucked back into existence, easy as if he'd opened his eyes after a dream.

He's alive, and whole, and... human, if the stutter of his suddenly anxious heart is anything to go by.

"Castiel," a voice greets from behind, causing him to stumble in its direction.

"Jack," he says, nearly overcome with relief. But even as he says it, he can feel that it's wrong, that Jack is suddenly so much _more._

"In some ways," Jack says, "Yes. I am still me."

Cas's brain is scrambling to make sense of what he's learning at a very fast speed here. He's alive, and Jack is not Jack. What did they possibly _do_ , what did Sam and--

"Dean," Cas blurts, scared and urgent. 

Jack's smile is very small and very kind. "He's alive. And somewhere close to fine, with Sam."

Cas's eyes close with the solace of knowing. Weak from this, he nearly staggers to his knees.

"I wanted to thank you," Jack says, "for... everything. So the Empty and I made our own deal. And now you're back." His smile, mystifying and secretive, makes it clear Cas isn't meant to hear the details.

"Jack, thank you, I..." He trails off, because the words are too big, the grief at what he's losing with Jack too strong. 

"Goodbye, Cas."

There's a shimmer, and then he's gone and Cas is left alone, still very much in a cornfield in the middle of night. He looks out at the endless rows of vegetation and feels lost, and then looks up at the stars and finds himself even more adrift.

When it all feels like too much, there's a sudden weight in his pocket that wasn't there before. His phone. He pulls it out, spots the decent battery life and available bars, and feels anchored by gratitude.

"Thank you," he says aloud, though he aches.

+++

Forty miles later, Dean gruffly speaks up. "So, what's the plan?"

"I think." Sam breathes in and let's it out real slow. "I think I'm done with all this, Dean."

Dean waits for panic to set in but it doesn't come. Neither does the voice in his head that says ' _you pushed him away_ ' or ' _you deserve this_ ' or ' _no one you love can stand to stick by you_.' 

Maybe because, selfishly, he already has his own plan and this just makes it easier.

"After Jack brought everyone back," Sam goes on, keeping his voice quiet, "I got a text from Eileen. She's fine. She didn't even know she was gone, actually."

"You didn't say anything."

"Yeah, because." Sam tries for matter-of-fact but lands on bittersweet. "I thought, maybe, you'd get your own text too." He doesn't say ' _from Cas_ ' but it's there clear as day. Sam rushes past it before Dean's guard can shoot back up. "But I guess. After all this time, no one else is coming back."

It's been a week. So.

"No," Dean agrees, and it stings.

"Chuck was a dick, but being all alone with no one else in the world, literally, it made me realize. I _need_ people. The friends we have, the people we love. I don't want to end up ten, twenty more years down the line still wondering what I'm missing out on, Dean. And I have this amazing, incredible woman who I want to spend as much time as I possibly can with," he tells him, teary-eyed. 

"Look, you don't gotta get permission from me, okay, I get it. After everything we have been through, man do I ever. I'm--happy for you." He struggles to say it, but everything in him means it.

Sam seems grateful. They fall into an easy silence.

But then, after a beat, Sam asks, "What about you?"

+++

Cas means to call Dean. That is the plan.

He turns on his phone, pulls up his contacts list, and let's his finger hover over Dean's name. But something stops him. Something he's unwilling to put a name to.

Instead, he tucks his phone away and trudges toward the road, toward a gas station up ahead.

+++

"Cas." Dean's eyes are squeezed shut. Sam's in the shower, washing off the last five hours on the road, and Dean's snuck outside to pray in the motel parking lot. He tips his head down, colored in the glow of the vending machine. "I know you can't hear me, I know I've got a snowball's shot in hell here, but I hafta try, man. Please. If you're out there, if you're getting this. You gotta fight. You hear me? Keep fighting, 'til I... 'til I can... Please, Cas."

+++

Cas learns he's in Dell Rapids, South Dakota, thanks to a newspaper inside the Gas n' Sip. So, he's not too far from home, assuming Sam and Dean are at the bunker.

He's shocked to see it's been a week since everything went down. Once again he wonders what he's missed. He thinks of Dean, and then he purposefully thinks of other things to distract himself from the one thought that so constantly seems to persist, like how he needs a mode of transportation. Money.

"You gonna buy that or just read the whole thing here?" a burly man at the counter drawls, gesturing at the newspaper.

With some guilt, Cas leaves it on a shelf.

+++

Sam comes fully dressed out of the shower in the same clothes he was wearing when he went in, running a towel through his wet hair.

"Want to order in? I don't know if you noticed, but our choices are basically fast food or pizza. I could probably get a salad, so, maybe--"

"I'm going after Cas," Dean cuts him off, bracing himself assertively in defiance of the nerves revolting within.

Sam looks surprised. "Wait, he's back? How--"

"I'm gonna go get the dumb sonuvabitch. Figure he's busted outta the Empty before, there's gotta be a way in."

Sitting down across from him at the rickety lone table in the room, Sam takes his time forming his words. "And if you can't?"

Dean doesn't even consider this. "Not an option."

"Dean," Sam tries. Then, carefully and weighted, "You said he saved you. Right? That he sacrificed himself for you? Maybe, this one time, we need to just honor his choice--"

Dean's up and on his feet, turning from Sam. He swipes a hand across his jaw. "No."

There's a heavy pause. "He knew what he was getting into."

Dean spins back on him, amped up to ten. "How the hell would even know. Huh? You weren't there."

"Yeah," Sam rises from his seat too, "and I keep asking what happened and you keep not answering--" 

"He made a deal with the Empty." Dean's eyes fall shut at the admission, all the fight knocked clean out of him. "He got himself cursed. Made some dumbass bargain that if he felt a moment of happiness, it'd come for him."

Sam's eyes are scanning Dean's face while he works to make sense of everything. "But, how? Nothing about those last few minutes was _happy_ , what could've even..."

When he trails off, Dean meets his eyes without hiding a single damn thing. Sam's always been smart; he gets it in one.

"Oh," he says, and Dean feels sick to his stomach now that it's out there, now that it's not just his to know anymore.

Sam clears his throat. "Did you two, ah." He gestures.

That makes his gut clench for a whole other reason. " _No._ "

"Hey, I'm just trying to fill in some blanks here," Sam defends, hands up.

"Unfill 'em," he orders. Calmer, "We talked."

"And whatever you two... talked about. It triggered the deal?"

"Yeah," Dean says around a swallow.

"Dean..."

"Yeah, so, I'm not leaving him there. To rot with that damn thing messing with him for eternity? No."

"Okay."

"I'm gonna bring him home."

Sam's staring at him like some dots have connected--and not on his end, but Dean's. "I would do anything for Eileen." He chooses his next words deliberately. "For the person I love."

Dean doesn't say anything, but it's already out there anyway. Sam just walks past, clasping him on the shoulder as he goes. Dean feels something come undone inside him. It feels a lot like being cut free.

+++

Cas has been back an hour and twenty two minutes, according to his phone. He's made his way to a bus stop, but the town of Dell Rapids is so small, the bus would only take him to another part of town, not any farther.

Again, he brings up his contacts list. Looks at Dean's name glowing in the dark.

It makes his heart beat high inside his throat.

He doesn't regret his decision to summon the Empty in the way that he did it. Faced with the same choice, he'd make it every time if the outcome was always Dean's life being spared. But he had resigned himself to that ending. To speaking his truth and not leaving it as a burden on Dean's shoulders, but instead a weight lifted off them.

And now he's just _back_ , as if nothing happened. As if the world simply moved on.

What he wants to do, and what is right to do, don't seem to be the same thing anymore, and he battles with another choice.

+++

"So." Sam bites into a forkful of green leaves. "Do you love him?"

Dean chokes on his sip of beer, spilling it all over his lap. "Son of a," he curses, setting the bottle on the night stand.

Sam grins, hiding it with another bite of salad. "I'll take that as a yes."

"We're not having this conversation."

"C'mon. All that staring, the breakups and makeups, the _years and years_ of unresolved sexual tension--"

Dean cuts him off with a glare on his way to the bathroom.

"I deserve to know!" Sam calls after him.

"Shut your face!"

"Have you kissed?!"

Dean walks back out of the bathroom with a hand towel and a threatening finger pointed at Sam. "I will murder you in ways even Chuck couldn't imagine." Less hostile, but just as firm, "I'm not talking about my Cas thing with you."

Sam's smirking, his eyes lit with actual merriment. "But you admit there's a thing."

Dean glares even harder. Silently they communicate _it's cute to see you like this, Dean_ and _I will end your entire life, starting with your hippie hair._ Sam gives it up first, but as Dean's turning in victory, he hears, "Destiel. Deanstiel?"

"Seriously, I will leave your ass here!" Dean shouts, slamming the bathroom door shut behind him. It muffles the sound of Sam's laughter but not his own traitorous heart.

+++

Cas takes a leap of faith.

On the fourth ring, there's an answer. Cas almost hangs up, but then, his voice. Dean. "...Who is this?"

It feels so good to hear him. Too good.

"Dean," he says, exhaling it out.

"Again. Who the hell is this? You're gonna tell me why you're calling as _Cas_ \--"

"It's me."

There's a pause. Then, sounding angry, "One last time. Then I hang up."

"I'm in Dell Rapids, South Dakota, at a bus stop. Jack brought me back in a cornfield, somewhat anticlimactically."

A second, longer pause. This time Dean's voice softens considerably. "Cas? That really you?"

"Yes, it's really me. Hello, Dean."

"Cas, my god, you're-- _if this is another trick, if this ain't really--so help me, I swear to god_ \--"

"Swearing to god seems pointless now. I don't think Jack is very afraid of you, unfortunately."

There's a noise on the other end that sounds exactly like the way Cas's entire chest feels. "Cas, it's you."

"I'd like to come home."

+++

"So, wait, hang on a sec," Sam says, following Dean around the motel room while he swipes his things. Duffle, jacket, keys. "You're just booking it, no questions asked?"

"Already got the answers."

"Okay, but. What if this is a trick somehow, what if--" Fed up with Dean not actively listening to him, Sam cuts him off at the doorway.

Dean's stare turns stone hard. "Move."

Placating, Sam says, "We already got played this same way before. Remember? We could be walking into another trap."

"We're not."

"You don't know that."

Dean says again, "We're," and points back and forth between them, "not."

Sam gets it pretty quick. He stares at Dean like he's taking it personal. "Dean..."

"Maybe you're right, maybe this is a trap. Probably is, with our luck. But I'm going. Because if there's even a _sliver_ of a chance it's really him..." Dean swallows his emotions back down. "And you? You're gonna stay here, call Eileen."

"Dean," Sam says, sad, knowing there's no talking Dean out of this.

With a lingering look, Dean slips past his brother, sliding a hand across his shoulder to say goodbye.

+++

Cas finds out Dean is less than an hour away. Somehow, with his and Sam's aimless driving, they'd wound up nearby, almost like they were being drawn to the same spot. 

He feels Jack in this coincidence and finds himself, again, brimming with sorrow and love.

For the forty six minutes Cas sits and waits at a bus stop in Dell Rapids, his thoughts turn over themselves again and again. He worries if he made the right decision, when it seems instead to be the selfish one. He wonders if there will be a wedge between him and Dean. If he opened Dean's eyes to something he didn't want to see.

And then there's the familiar rumbling of a very obnoxious engine, a blinding pair of headlights, and that comforting sense of wholeness and rightness only Dean seems to bring him.

Cas stands.

+++

Dean can't tear his eyes off Cas as he steps out of the Impala. He goes around her hood feeling like there's a rope tying the two of them together--it keeps losing its slack, getting tighter and tighter until he's right there in front of him.

Cas's face mirrors his--disbelief, confusion, hope. So much hope, a desperate noise escapes out of Dean. Him and Cas fall into each other at the same time, Cas's arms winding around him tight just as he's pulling Cas into a hug. The second they come together, he knows.

"Cas," he laughs out, reckless with relief.

After a long moment of steadying each other, they pull apart. Dean keeps a hand on Cas's shoulder, unwilling to let go, to give up the solidity that proves he's here.

"Welcome back," he tells Cas, peace trickling in, slowly overtaking the loss, his anger.

"Is Sam--?"

"He's fine, he just. Had his own thing." Dean clears his throat.

Cas stares, searching for the meaning in that. Then he shakes his head. "So much for my blaze of glory."

"Call me crazy, but, I'd rather have you here." Cas's gaze snaps back to Dean's. He feels the truth climbing up and then spilling out of him. "Cas, you can't do that again. You can't just up and die like that."

It's no surprise when Cas stiffens. "If it's a choice between your life or mine, if I can save you--"

"Except there's no 'yours' or 'mine' anymore. There's an 'ours' here, you got that? From here on out."

Dean watches Cas's face and sees the exact moment it hits. When he understands. Everything goes soft. "Dean...?"

Finally letting go, Dean paces away just to turn back and say, "That was the last time. I mean it. You ever do it again, I'm gonna leave your ass wherever it winds up. I'm serious."

Cas takes a step toward him. And then another, smiling small. 

Dean rambles, "And besides, the heroics? Kinda suck at this point, this many deaths in. You might wanna try something new, just sayin'."

"Well, I'm glad you were so unaffected."

"I barely cared," he agrees, and they both know by the warble that's a damn lie. All of a sudden, he can't hold it in anymore. He blurts, breathless, "Did you mean it, Cas?"

The second he says it, he gets his answer. Cas holds his gaze so fondly, full of so much devotion, his legs nearly buckle.

"Every word, I'm afraid," Cas tells him, keeping it light for his sake.

"Damn," Dean chokes out with a weak laugh. "Sucks for you."

"I disagree."

Dean's lightheaded with the possibility of what this means, for him and them and their future that only two hours ago seemed so bleak. To have Cas back, to have this _longing_ bubbling so close to the surface knowing he can do something about it.

All he can say, all he can manage, is, "Yeah, well, me too," and hope to god Cas can hear everything he means in it.

He must, because he comes even closer. He reaches out and slides his hand up Dean's jaw. And just holds him. His palm is warm, and Dean could cry from the tenderness of it.

He tells Cas hoarsely, "Let's go home."

+++

THE END

**Author's Note:**

> And then you know they go back to the bunker and they dance around their feelings for a while before Dean one day, over a tense conversation about how scrambled their eggs should be, shuts Cas up with a kiss. And just like that, it changes things.


End file.
